The Watchman at Proxim Bridge
by Shadsie
Summary: A tale of Brigo, the watchman who patrols Proxim Bridge and talks Link off the edge if he stands upon it - because not all heroes carry swords.


**THE WATCHMAN AT PROXIM BRIDGE**

 **A Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Fan Fiction**

* * *

The first time Brigo crossed Proxim Bridge, he found a pair of women being menaced by a trio of red monsters. He put his spear to the task of evening the odds. After the cowardly bokoblins fled what had suddenly become a fair fight, the women went on their way hunting truffles and Brigo went back to his business of seeking out some old barracks ruins.

The second and third times that Brigo crossed Proxim Bridge were uneventful. He crossed to the places where he collected scrap metal to the places he went to sell it. Brigo had experienced some of the "normal" jobs for a while – previously employed helping his family farm rice in Hateno Town and as a guard at Fort Hateno watching to make sure that travelers were safe upon the road and that no one and nothing too suspicious got too near to the peaceful city, but it seemed that most monsters avoided human-settled areas most of the time, and so the job was as dull as growing rice. A decision to set out collecting scrap as a matter of feeding the "adventurer" in him was something that Brigo had only expected to do for a short time, although collectors of old swords and amateur blacksmiths looking for broken shields and any old other thing had made the scavenger-business lucrative.

The fourth time he came to Proxim Bridge he met a man who was standing on the edge of it, looking alternately down at the river below it and up at the sky. Brigo did not know what the young Hylian was doing. The distance between the bridge and the river was not steep, and so Brigo thought that the traveler was perhaps contemplating a swim. It was a hot day and he'd heard about Hylians who'd traveled around to Zora's Domain to seek out training in the legendary diving-skills of the Zora.

The man took a moment to look at him. "I don't think the ol' Calamity's going to be held up forever, do you? Ain't no future for this kingdom, is there? Ain't one for me."

"What are you talking about?" Brigo asked, not knowing how to respond to the random ramble.

"We live in a ghost-land," the man said. "Might as well become ghosts, don'tcha think?"

With that, the man turned his face away from Brigo and proceeded to jump off the bridge. He made no graceful Zora-dive, he simply plummeted. Brigo ran to the lip of the bridge and witnessed the splash below him. He saw the man's hand, flailing with instinct; disappear in the waters as he was dragged down by what was apparently, a fierce undertow.

Brigo called and he screamed. He found himself running full-tilt across the bridge and along the shore, hoping to find the jumper washed up in the shallows so he could aid him. He followed the course of the river for an hour, running and working up a sweat the entire way before he gave up, realizing that the man was definitively gone. No Hylian could struggle for as long beneath the waters. If the guy washed up anywhere at this point, it would be far downriver and he'd be a corpse.

Brigo caught his breath and trekked wearily back to Proxim Bridge, too exhausted to fully process any grief he thought he should have felt over just having witnessed a man's death. He had not known him personally – they'd just both been travelers passing along an old bridge.

When he got back to the bridge and gazed out upon the lip with the broken stonework the man had jumped off of, Brigo knew that he could not leave.

He set up a camp with a fire over which to cook the simple provisions in his pack. Over the next week he scouted out good hunting and gathering spots in the area and built a simple shelter.

Monsters took to camping near the bridge and Brigo would chase them off to keep the bridge clear. Most travelers rode or walked across without incident. He eyed them all warily, fearing he'd get another grim "show." He eyed the group of monsters in the camp across the river he dared not take on alone, holding up his spear in hopes of scaring the individuals and pairs that were scouting out the travelers at bay.

He got quite lonely on his self-imposed patrol of the bridge. He found it an easy enough living. He always had fresh water for drinking, bathing and cooking (so long as he didn't think about the bones that might be resting along the river's bottom). He took only from the fresh flow upriver of the bridge. There was a forest nearby with plenty of apple trees and he knew what mushrooms were edible.

Most travelers came and went without incident. He offered directions and a listening ear for anyone who wanted to talk. People traded prepared foods with him.

One night he saw a woman step to the edge of the bridge just after a fierce gale had died down.

"Wait! What are you doing?" he called out.

"Don't come near me!" The woman cried back. She stood ramrod straight, squared her shoulders and looked out into the night air.

"That ledge is dangerous and it's still slick from the rain. Why don't you come down from there? I'm free to talk. We can talk about anything you want."

"What do you do around here?" she answered dully. "I haven't seen any patrolmen around any of the other bridges. I crossed Lake Hylia a while back and there were nothing but monsters."

She continued to stay on the ledge.

"I'm here to chase the monsters off this one," Brigo answered. "There's a bit of a problem with them around here and this is an important route."

"Good to know," the woman answered. "I suppose you have something to keep you busy."

"Like you wouldn't believe. Now come down from there. THIS way. You're scaring me."

The woman sighed, slackening her shoulders. "You must have guessed by now that I didn't come to this bridge to cross it."

"Yes." Brigo answered. "But won't you consider talking for a little bit? You must be cold. I have a fire goin'. I don't know about you, but I tend to like a little warm tea in my belly before I make any big decisions."

The woman laughed. "Persistent, aren't you?" she said. "Why does it matter to you? I'm just a random traveler. I bet people come and go from this bridge all the time and you never see their faces again. How many fools cross this bridge on their way to Hyrule Castle never to return because they get blown away by the giant metal monsters out that way?"

"I have no idea, Miss," Brigo answered, "But I saw someone do once what you seem to be thinking about doin' and it's been a while but I still can't sleep some nights."

The woman stepped down from the ledge and approached him. "A self-interested answer," she said. "I like that. It's honest. I think I'll take you up on that tea?"

He led her down to his shelter and his campfire and got out a metal teakettle and a pair of ceramic cups from his well-appointed backpack. "It's herbal," he said frankly as he set the kettle to brew, "just from some stuff I gather around the area."

"Are you some kind of official guardsman?" the woman asked.

"Nope. The name's Brigo. I crossed this bridge a few times doing scrap-trading and saw a need and decided to stay. The damn monsters won't stay off the bridge you see. I know my way with a spear. They're cowardly enough that they can be chased off without too much trouble."

"I'm Leda," the woman answered, noting the lie in his eyes as Brigo brought one of his cups up to his face for a sip. She scooted close to the fire, noting that she was shivering. She did not know if it was because of the cold or her anxiety or a mixture of both.

"What brings you to Proxim Bridge?" Brigo asked, trying to make it sound as casual as possible. He made it sound like he was discussing trade-business.

"I set out to find my way in the world and failed pretty hard at it," Leda replied, blowing a curl of steam away from her cup. She let a tear fall down her cheek despite trying to hold her tears in. No matter what job I try at, it doesn't seem that anything works out for me. I don't have the muscle for mining. I just got fired from Riverside Stable because boss didn't think the horses were taking to me and some guy who boarded one there forgot to tell me his steed's special diet. I almost killed the thing feeding it the standard hay ration! Maybe I overlooked something on a list…. I'm just so scatterbrained…"

"Easy, easy," Brigo said. "It sounds tough."

"It doesn't seem like there's anything I can do to make anyone happy," Leda said. "I'm a disgrace to my family for reasons I can't even talk about. I was hoping that maybe I could go back to Lurelin rich enough to make up for my clumsiness by finding something – anything. I can't even do scrap-hunting right! Every ruin I come upon seems to be cleaned out and… well, when I go to some of those old houses, I feel like I want to cry because I can't help but imagine the people who used to live there before the Calamity struck. I'm too weak for this world, you know?"

"Nah, don't say that," Brigo responded. "You're giving a lonely guy someone to talk to."

"Hmmm. Good tea, by the way."

"Look at me," Brigo added. "I didn't have anything particular to do in life until I decided to plunk down here and patrol this bridge. You never know when something odd is going to present itself to you."

"If it does, I'll probably fail at it, just like everything else. Why go on in life like that? Why delay what's going to happen anyway?" Leda sipped her tea. "I figured that if I was going to fail in life, maybe I should fail on my terms."

"Now, I can't tell you for sure that everything's going to be alright," Brigo sighed, "But I can tell you a story I know."

"What kind of story?"

"Some say it's a fairy tale," he began. "You do know the tale of the Hero, the Princess and the Calamity, don't you?"

"Well, of course I do!" Leda grumbled. "Every kid in all of Hyrule's provinces grow up on that one. One hundred years ago that big black thing took over the castle and the fields burned and the Hero who was supposed to save us all got himself killed."

"A classic story of failure," Brigo said with a small, rueful smile. "But that is not the whole story. The way I was told it, the princess lived her life in a shadow – the shadow of her forebears, unable to awaken the sacred power that was her birthright. She spent her days researching ways to keep the Calamity from coming. No matter how much she studied or how much she prayed, the power would not awaken in her. The king – her father – and the entire kingdom were pressing her and calling her a failure…"

"And the fields burned."

"Yes, but our land was not completely destroyed because somehow, the princess did awaken her power. The reason why that dark energy at that castle stays in its place instead of devouring us all is… as I heard the tale… because the princess is trapped within him and is bending all of her will to keeping the Ganon sealed. In other words, poor Princess Zelda thought she was a failure, too, but in the end, she is what is keeping Hyrule alive. You and I were able to be born because of a 'failure' princess."

"What of the Hero?"

"No one seems to know for sure about that one. Some say he's dead. Some say that he's wounded and ill and was sealed away in some lost technology medical facility and will return someday. Some say that he died, but will be reincarnated to help us. I don't know. Maybe our long-ago failure-princess will be able to destroy the Calamity Ganon on her own. It has been a century. My point is that we're still going despite the kingdom having been brought to wrack and ruin."

"Hmmm," Leda mumbled. "I do not think of myself as strong as a princess, nor do I know of my family line having any kind of supernatural birthright."

"You don't need that," Brigo said. "If there's anything I've learned in life, it's that it's not really about 'success,' it's about survival. You try to survive as long as you can and you never know what stuff is going to come your way. There are no guarantees that it's going to be good stuff, but no guarantee that it's all going to be absolute disaster, either. As far as I've seen, it's been… interesting. I was wandering through life, not sure of any destination, either, and then I plunked myself down at this darn bridge."

"To give travelers tired of the road a little conversation and tea?"

Brigo smiled. "Well, it's not like I have anything better to do."

Leda stayed under the shelter for the night and set back out upon the road. She said that she'd given her actions some thought and that she'd like to pay a visit to her mother in her hometown, to "let it be decided by others whether she was a disgrace or not."

Brigo continued to spend his days at Proxim Bridge. Most days were uneventful. There was one day when a huge red Zora came by and nearly gave him a heart attack when he made a swan-drive into the river, only to pop his head back up downriver and swim to shore.

Breathless, Brigo jogged to the shoreline. "Do you know how dangerous diving here is?" the poor Hylian yelped.

"Have you never seen a Zora before, good sir?" the Zora asked causally. "My skin was feeling a mite parched. My people have both lungs and gills. No worries! Apologies for scaring you like that!"

"No… I know what you are… it's just that undertow!"

"I am the most gifted swimmer of my tribe! Undertow? Ha-ha! It just tickled my fins. Prince Sidon at your service!"

The Zora stood tall enough to block the sun and flashed a row of razor-sharp teeth. To say that Brigo was intimidated would be an understatement.

"Uh… Brigo. Bridge-watchman," Brigo answered. "I apologize if I have offended your highness."

"Oh, not at all, my good man! Though, may I ask, do you know of any strong Hylian warriors for hire? I am looking for a skilled archer in particular, one who knows how to use shock arrows – electric-elemental magic arrows."

"I hunt a little, but I wouldn't call myself a warrior of any skill and I've never heard of shock arrows. You could try around some of the stables. If you need directions, well, Dueling Peaks is just down the road from here, if you take the winding road that way, if you head north, you'll make it to Riverside out in Hyrule Field and if you wend south, you'll hit Lake Hylia."

"Thanks, friend."

Brigo did not see the Zora prince again, but had no worries for him – at least as long as he stuck close to the rivers.

The night after that, he was chasing bokoblins off the bridge and had felled a pair. A blood moon came up and he had to fight them again. The unlucky following morning brought him a man standing up on the edge of the bridge and staring down at the waters mumbling about how the Calamity was soon to break free and consume everything.

"It hit me last night!" he said excitedly, doing a little shuffling dance upon the bridge's lip, sending every nerve in Brigo alight. "The Blood Moon! The Blood Moon! Don't you see? It's never going to end! No matter how many times the monsters fall they rise again! I couldn't protect my brother or grandma! With the Blood Moon, no one can protect anyone!"

"Is that a reason to just let them win without a fight? To just throw your life away?" Brigo barked. He was gentle with most people who got a little too close to the edge of Proxim Bridge for his liking, but in this man's case, he sensed a need for firmness.

The "dancer" stood, shocked-still.

"Are you just going to let them win?" Brigo asked again. "If you take one more step, sir, the Calamity wins. Now come on. Step down from there. THIS way, not THAT way!"

To his wary relief, the man obeyed.

"I'm not sure I believe in the old stories anymore," he said. "I'm not relying on a Hero to save us anymore. I don't think he's coming. As for the Calamity, even if it doesn't keep raising the monsters and the Blood Moons… even if it doesn't break free from whatever's holding it, don't we live in cruel universe?"

"Perhaps," Brigo agreed. "But you're young still. I think you've still got some fight in you. I can see it in your eyes."

"Huh?"

"I see hope in your eyes. You don't want to let despair win. I can tell."

"Are you just saying things to distract me?"

"Does it matter?"

"I just feel like we're all caught up in a wheel, you know?" the man began. "It doesn't matter if it's one hundred years ago, ten-thousand years ago or earlier; or last week. The monsters always come. There is always suffering. If the Goddess has a plan, she's a cruel damn deity. I bet the whole universe is just going to spin out into nothing someday, so why not get to the business of sleepin' if I can't even save the ones I love? I've got people already sleepin'."

"I'm sure you have people who remain," Brigo suggested. "And even if you don't, that river flow down there… that's not sleepin'. Your ribs will get cracked; water will rush into you like gravel – probably some of that, too. The pain will be excruciating and your mind will do weird things to you. It ain't layin' down to sleep."

"Grandma might be disappointed in me on the other side… if we don't just all come to nothing."

Brigo shrugged. "And if we do, why let the Calamity win? You look like a tough man. I know you're better than the monsters that've hurt your own."

The man was frank. "Have you ever thought about it? Has the Blood Moon made you a little nuts?"

"There's not a day I don't look down into that water," Brigo confessed. "Each and every one of us is the sum of our demons. For the moment, whether it's keeping the red guys from beating up travelers or just being here to talk to other lonely people, I choose to fight."

Brigo did not tell the man about the first man he'd ever met at the edge of the bridge. He never got his name, either. The travler moved on down the road, as others did to a fate or fortune unknown.

One teenage girl jumped and he could not stop her. There was a caravan crossing at the same time, so she was rather brazen to leap in full view of a crowd. She survived, however. Some of the caravaneers hooked one of their own to a rope and a horse and several stout men secured a hold on the rope - working a way for a brave idiot to dive into the water after her for a rescue. The girl came out of it with cracked bones and a lifetime of regrets. As soon as she'd coughed up some river water and got her bearings, she scolded herself, calling herself stupid. She shivered in a mix of terror, shame and cold. Brigo got some tea ready. The girl only wanted to talk to the horse that her guide-rope had been hitched to after everything was over.

That was how life went for the self imposed watchman of Proxim Bridge. There were good days and there were bad days. Most days were dull days and he thanked Hylia and the Golden Three for every boring day that went by.

"Hey, do you think you can save the world by throwing yourself away?" he yelled across the bridge at a short, slim young blond man who was crouched on the edge of the bridge with a strange smirk on his face.

"Oh, huh?" the boy replied. "I was just getting a good read on that bokoblin camp down there… hmmm…. Bomb arrows or just go in full-berserker…hmmm? Should I strip down to my underwear first? That might be fun…"

"Listen, kid, I'm young, but you're younger. You're going to do great things with your life, I just know it. Do you think you can save the world by ending it all?"

The young Hylian stepped off the edge of the bridge and rubbed the back of his neck. "Oh! You thought! I'm so sorry!"

"It doesn't matter what I think. Do you need to talk? I'm here. We can talk for a while, about anything like. The name's Brigo."

"Link. You misunderstand. I'm so sorry that I frightened you. You see, I was trying to think what might be the best strategy for taking down those monsters upriver. I'm pretty sure I saw a treasure-chest over at their camp…"

"You mean to take all those beasts on all at once?" Brigo asked, raising an eyebrow. "Well, there's one way of doing it, I suppose. Either the river or the monsters. Either way, you're too young for that. You've got a life ahead of you. Besides, if you really want to go fight the critters, you aren't going to reach them from the bridge. You jump off that thing and try to swim; the current will sweep you under like THAT!"

"I have a magic paraglider in my pocket."

"You have a magic paraglider in your pocket…" Brigo said incredulously.

Link looked up, ignoring him. "Yeah, I think this does feel like a wild-charge-in-my-underpants day."

Before Brigo knew it, the young man was pulling down his pants and pulling off his shirt and wadding them into a tiny pouch upon his belt, which should have been too small to carry them. He strapped the sword that he'd been carrying – a royal claymore by the looks of it – back across his shoulders and pulled some kind of tiny charm out from the same hip-pouch into which he'd stashed his clothing.

Just as Brigo was saying "No! Wait!" the boy had jumped off the lip of the bridge and had unfurled what was, indeed, a cloth glider attached to struts of wood. The bridge watchman stared in disbelief as Link whipped the large sword off his back and downed every last screaming bokoblin in nothing but a pair of blue skintight undershorts.

He also watched with a wince as the boy kicked open a treasure chest that was sitting at the camp before remembering to put any kind of footwear on.

Link waved at him from the camp. Brigo scratched his head.

The boy had fought like a legend. He'd been hearing rumors from some of the travelers that passed along the bridge that the Hero-in-the-Hundred-Year-Sleep had returned.

Also that the sleep had apparently shaved at least a little of the sanity off of his mind.

Brigo wondered if he was looking at a legendary crazy person.

Link put the clothing he'd previously worn back on – simple trousers and a fancy blue shirt with an intricate design of a sword on the chest.

"You'll likely be seeing me again," Link said. "This is a main road and I have much reason to cross here to and from some of the important towns."

"I am going to be watching you," Brigo warned.

Link asked for directions and was sent on his way.

Sometime later, Leda came back down the road to Proxim Bridge. She carried a package with her and presented it to Brigo as a gift – some dried fish and other specialties from her hometown and rice for making paella. They sat beneath Brigo's shelter and talked through a rainstorm.

"A thank you," she said shyly. "I haven't exactly found my purpose yet, but thank you for encouraging me to keep seeking it."

"I don't need anything like this…" Brigo said, humbly.

"I thought you could use some fish with the salt already added. Ocean-fish. I bet you get tired of mushrooms, freshwater fish and the local venison."

"Surprisingly I don't, but thank you."

"Don't look at me that way. I'm not getting back up on the lip of the bridge. I'm only crossing it. My mother's been wondering if I could seek out any caravans that sell cane sugar and butter. She's a little too weak to travel but wants to start baking again. I guess that gives me a small purpose for the time being. I didn't tell her what happened here. I'm not going to. It's not anything she needs to know. Again, I just wanted to thank you, to do something. It turns out that I wasn't as much of a disgrace to my folks as I thought."

"Good to hear."

"Anything interesting happen here lately?"

"Oh, last week… a short blond kid came by… no frightening intentions, but he just about gave me a heart attack! He did just about the craziest thing I've ever seen – in a good way! Let me tell you all about it…"

* * *

 **END.**

 **Shadsie, 2017**

 _Written because I really like that particular NPC. Long live Brigo, for he is awesome. I heard that he is based upon a real person, a Mr. Kevin Briggs, a highway patrolman at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco who has saved upwards of 200 lives and counting – so real people like Brigo exist! I started this fanfic before coming across, coincidentally, an article about Briggs, as in, I had half the fic written, and then I checked ...Cracked and saw an article about Briggs. I also got to thinking about how Princess Zelda's own story (of going through life a "failure") might relate to the people of a struggling Hyrule and used it for inspiration._


End file.
